Trump Death Cult Governor Greg Abbott is a mass murderer. He is in a contest to murder more Americans than his fellow Trump Death Cult Governor Ron “DeathSantis” of Florida.
After recovering from a positive Covid test himself, Gov. Abbott bans Covid vaccine mandates in Texas, regardless of FDA approval status:
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday reissued his ban on Covid vaccine mandates by any state or local government entity, just days after Pfizer’s shot was granted full approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The executive order comes after the governor, who is recovering from his own case of Covid, touted the vaccine as the reason for his “brief & mild” infection.
The Pfizer news on Monday raised questions about the validity of Abbott’s previous executive order banning vaccines under emergency use authorization, but the governor’s latest order bans Covid vaccine mandates regardless of approval status. Abbott‘s order allows for exceptions for nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.
Abbott added another agenda item to the legislative special session on Wednesday, asking the Legislature to consider taking action to address whether state or local entities can mandate the shots and, if so, what exemptions should be included in the mandate.
Abbott has been one of the Republican governors at the forefront in the battle against Covid mandates. The governor issued an executive order banning government entities, including school districts, from issuing mask requirements this spring.
As I posted last week:
The Texas Education Agency earlier on Thursday said that Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) executive order banning local mask mandates in schools will not be enforced as it faces legal challenges from multiple districts. Texas won’t enforce ban on school mask mandates amid litigation, agency says:
The agency, which oversees primary and secondary public education in the Lone Star State, said in a public health guidance that the provisions of Abbott’s school mask mandate ban “are not being enforced as the result of ongoing litigation.”
“Further guidance will be made available after the court issues are resolved,” the agency added.
This is happening With more than 12,700 Texans hospitalized with COVID-19, the state is nearing its previous pandemic peak.
UPDATE 8/27/21: Judge allows mask mandates in Travis County schools; Paxton appeal blocks order:
Concluding that Gov. Greg Abbott exceeded his authority by banning mask mandates in Texas, an Austin judge ruled Friday that school districts in Travis County can enforce face coverings as a COVID-19 precaution.
In her ruling, State District Judge Catherine Mauzy concluded Abbott’s ban on mandatory masks — contained in a July 29 executive order — was unlawful and exceeded his authority in violation of the Texas Constitution.
Mauzy’s order also applied to 19 school districts that represent about 1 million students — including Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth and Houston — as well as Austin Community College, which also sued Abbott.
However, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton quickly appealed, automatically blocking enforcement of Mauzy’s temporary injunction — though the Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals can be asked to reinstate the judge’s order while Paxton’s challenge proceeds.
Breaking News today: A Florida state judge just ruled that school districts can legally require their students to wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19. That’s two-for-two for the courts blocking Trump Death Cult Governors’ reckless and irresponsible anti-mask mandates.
The AP reports, Judge blocks Florida governor’s order banning mask mandates:
Florida school districts can legally require their students to wear masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19, a judge ruled Friday, saying Gov. Ron DeSantis overstepped his authority when he issued an executive order banning such mandates.
Leon County Circuit Judge John C. Cooper agreed with a group of parents who claimed in a lawsuit that DeSantis’ order is unconstitutional and cannot be enforced. The governor’s order gave parents the sole right to decide if their child wears a mask at school.
Cooper said DeSantis’ order “is without legal authority.”
His decision came after a three-day virtual hearing, and after 10 Florida school boards voted to defy DeSantis and impose mask requirements with no parental opt-out. Cooper’s ruling will not go into effect until it is put into writing, which the judge asked the parents’ lawyers to complete by Monday.
Cooper said that while the governor and others have argued that a new Florida law gives parents the ultimate authority to oversee health issues for their children, it also exempts government actions that are needed to protect public health and are reasonable and limited in scope. He said a school district’s decision to require student masking to prevent the spread of the virus falls within that exemption.
The law “doesn’t ban mask mandates at all,” Cooper said during a two-hour hearing that was conducted online because of the resurgent pandemic. “It doesn’t require that a mask mandate must include a parental opt-out at all.”
The judge also noted that two Florida Supreme Court decisions from 1914 and 1939 found that individual rights are limited by their impact on the rights of others. For example, he said, adults have the right to drink alcohol but not to drive drunk, because that endangers others. There is a right to free speech, but not to harass or threaten others or yell “fire” in a crowded theater, he said.
“We don’t have that right because exercising the right in that way is harmful or potentially harmful to other people,” Cooper said. He added that the law “is full of examples of rights that are limited (when) the good of others … would be adversely affected by those rights.”
DeSantis has dismissed the recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that people wear masks, saying it is not applicable to Florida. But Cooper cited numerous Florida laws and statutes — such as those covering health care in nursing homes, prisons and elsewhere — that direct decision-makers to give great weight to CDC guidelines.
The highly contagious delta variant led to an acceleration in cases around Florida and record high hospitalizations just as schools prepared to reopen classrooms this month. See, Florida Breaks Record For COVID Hospitalizations:
A day after it recorded the most new daily cases since the start of the pandemic, Florida on Sunday broke a previous record for current hospitalizations set more than a year ago before vaccines were available.
The state had 10,207 people hospitalized with confirmed COVID-19 cases, according to data reported to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The previous record was from July 23, 2020, more than a half-year before vaccinations started becoming widespread. Florida then had 10,170 hospitalizations, according to the Florida Hospital Association.
By mid-August, more than 21,000 new cases were being added per day, compared with about 8,500 a month earlier. Over the past week, new cases and hospitalizations have leveled off. There were 16,550 people hospitalized on Thursday, down from a record of above 17,000 last week — but still almost nine times the 1,800 who were hospitalized in June.
The 10 districts that have defied DeSantis’ order represent slightly more than half of the 2.8 million Florida public school students enrolled this year. The governor, a Republican who is eyeing a possible presidential run in 2024, had threatened to impose financial penalties on school boards that voted for strict mask mandates.
This evil GQP bastard Ron “DeathSantis” earlier this week: As Florida faces record covid-19 deaths, DeSantis says Biden should follow his lead:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said President Biden has failed to “end covid” [because of Trump Death Cult Governors’ sabotage] and should follow his state’s lead [in murdering its residents?], even as Florida experiences record-breaking cases, deaths and hospitalizations.
Florida is now reporting an average of 227 covid-19 deaths each day — a state record and by far the highest count in the nation. The daily death count in Florida, fueled by the highly transmissible delta variant, has increased by 613 percent in the past seven days, according to data compiled by The Washington Post.
The state reported more than 26,000 new coronavirus infections Wednesday, and 17,164 people were hospitalized with the virus, nearly tripling the hospitalization rate in the past month, according to federal data. More than 3,600 people with covid-19 are occupying beds in intensive care units, the second-highest total in the nation.
But in a Wednesday interview with Fox News, DeSantis defended his response, saying Florida is seeing “great success” in treating covid patients with monoclonal antibodies — an effective, widely available therapy that few people are receiving. The governor, considered a potential contender against Biden in the 2024 presidential election, said the treatment should have been “a bigger part of this whole response throughout the country from the beginning.”
“You know, he said he was going to end covid. He hasn’t done that,” DeSantis told Fox News host Jesse Watters. “At the end of the day, he is trying to find a way to distract from the failures of his presidency.”
You ignorant piece of shit. The goal is to prevent people from getting Covid in the first place, not to treat them, if they are so lucky, after they are sick with Covid. As you might imagine, this evil GQP bastard has a corrupt financial motive for this. DeSantis top donor invests in COVID drug governor promotes:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — who has been criticized for opposing mask mandates and vaccine passports — is now touting a COVID-19 antibody treatment in which a top donor’s company has invested millions of dollars.
Citadel, a Chicago-based hedge fund, has $15.9 million in shares of Regeneron Pharmaceutical Inc., according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Citadel CEO Ken Griffin has donated $10.75 million to a political committee that supports DeSantis — $5.75 million in 2018 and $5 million last April.
Ron “DeathSantis” is murdering his state’s residents so that his largest campaign contributor can profit off treating patients with Covid, and then give him more campaign contributions. Murder for money.
At some point, prosecutors need to charge these Trump Death Cult governors with criminal negligence for murdering their state’s residents. Being an elected official does not give these mass murderers a “license to kill.” Stop them before they can kill again.
And it is pretty goddamn cheeky for Trump Death Cult governors to go on the Fox Fascist Propaganda Network and try to blame Joe Biden for not ending the Coronavirus pandemic, when it is the propagandists at Fox Fascist Propaganda Network and Trump Death Cult governors who are actively sabotaging the federal effort to end the Coronavirus pandemic, and doing everything in their power to murder their own state residents. What kind of crazy bizzaro world are we living in?
There is some anecdotal evidence that this is backfiring for Ron “DeathSantis.” Salon reports, “Thumbs down”: Ron DeSantis hit with brutal poll numbers as COVID-19 cases rise in Florida:
New polling from Quinnipiac shows that Florida residents are broadly in favor of taking precautions to prevent the spread of COVID-19, including the mask mandates that DeSantis has tried banning in public schools.
Overall, 60% of Florida voters support school mask mandates, while just 36% are opposed.
DeSantis’ policy of cutting off salaries of school leaders who defy his mask mandate ban, meanwhile, is even more politically toxic for the governor, as just 25% say the policy is a good idea, while 69% say it’s a bad idea.
In fact, even a majority of Republican voters, who are the most opposed to school mask mandates, do not support withholding payment from school administrators who enact mask mandates.
“As COVID-19 makes a frightening resurgence, it’s Tallahassee versus the teaching institutions,” said Quinnipiac polling analyst Tim Malloy. “Thumbs down from Floridians on DeSantis’ ban on mask requirements in public schools. Thumbs down on DeSantis’ call to freeze pay of administrators who mandate mask wearing. And he gets scant support from fellow Republicans on penalizing the school leaders who defy him.”
The problem here is that this is not a political issue, it is a criminal justice issue: these Trump Death Cult governors are criminally negligent mass murderers. They need to be stopped before they can kill again. This is how the media should be reporting this.
More than 635,000 Americans have already died from Covid-19. The U.S. is projected to see nearly 100,000 more COVID-19 deaths between now and Dec. 1, according to the nation’s most closely watched forecasting model. 100,000 more COVID deaths seen unless US changes its ways:
Health experts say that toll could be cut in half if nearly everyone wore a mask in public spaces.
In other words, what the coronavirus has in store this fall depends on human behavior.
“Behavior is really going to determine if, when and how sustainably the current wave subsides,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, director of the University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium. “We cannot stop delta in its tracks, but we can change our behavior overnight.”
That means doubling down again on masks, limiting social gatherings, staying home when sick and getting vaccinated. “Those things are within our control,” Meyers said.
The U.S. is in the grip of a fourth wave of infection this summer, powered by the highly contagious delta variant, which has sent cases, hospitalizations and deaths soaring again, swamped medical centers, burned out nurses and erased months of progress against the virus.
Deaths are running at over 1,100 a day on average, turning the clock back to mid-March. One influential model, from the University of Washington, projects an additional 98,000 Americans will die by the start of December, for an overall death toll of nearly 730,000.
This is far more than the 675,000 deaths in the United States from the 1918 Flue Pandemic and more than the 620,000 casualties in America’s bloodiest war, the U.S. Civil War. Safe, effective vaccines have been widely available since April, free of charge. The current pandemic is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. Hospitalization and deaths from Covid-19 are entirely preventable. There is no damn excuse for what is happening, other than the Trump Death Cult.
UPDATE:
Mark your calendar: Arguments on legality of @dougducey & GOP lawmakers' ban on school mask mandates. Law set to take effect Sept. 29. https://t.co/EqTXCF0VUe
— Brahm Resnik (@brahmresnik) August 25, 2021
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The Wall Street Journal reports that the pandemic of the unvaccinated has caused “Covid-19 hospitalizations nationwide crossed above 100,000 this week for the second time in the pandemic, overwhelming caregiver capacity in several states.”
“U.S. Covid-19 Hospitalizations Approach a Peak as Delta Variant Spreads”, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-covid-19-hospitalizations-approach-a-peak-as-delta-variant-spreads-11630155627?mod=hp_lead_pos7
Keeping ahead of demand is harder now than during earlier surges, according to doctors, nurses and hospital executives. Patients with other illnesses returned to hospitals this year, leaving fewer open beds as Covid-19 cases soared. The demand is most acute in ICUs, which care for the most-critical patients and need highly trained medical staff. Hospitals are short-staffed and unable to recruit enough nurses and respiratory therapists, who are exhausted as the pandemic wears on.
The climb in hospitalizations has been steep, fueled by the highly contagious Delta variant, hospital officials said. “That spike is more exaggerated,” said Hugh Tappan, who oversees 11 HCA Healthcare Inc. hospitals in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. In recent weeks, they have paused surgeries that could be delayed, diverted ambulances and stopped taking patients from other hospitals as capacity has become strained.
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Anti-vaxxers are responsible for over-topping hospital capacity, and denying health care to those who desperately need hospital care. They should be treated as social pariahs.
What Gov. Ron “DeathSantis” has wrought: “14 Portable Morgues Heading To Central Florida Hospitals Amid ‘Unprecedented Deaths’”, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/14-portable-morgues-florida-covid_n_612afa32e4b0f562f3deddb9
Fourteen portable morgues are being sent to central Florida hospitals amid what one official called “unprecedented deaths” during the state’s record COVID-19 crisis.
Each refrigerated morgue holds 12 bodies, Lynne Drawdy, executive director of the Central Florida Disaster Medial Coalition, who ordered the units, told the Orlando Sentinel.
“The number of deaths right now is unprecedented,” Drawdy told the newspaper. “What we’re hearing from the hospitals is that the death count right now is higher than it has ever been.”
Let’s not forget the sociopath governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, who hosted the second annual Covid super-spreader event at Sturgis this month. “Warnings About the Sturgis Rally Have Come Tragically True”, https://www.thedailybeast.com/sturgis-rally-is-what-a-vaccine-era-coronavirus-superspreader-event-looks-like?ref=home
In western South Dakota’s Meade County, more than one in three COVID-19 tests are currently returning positive, and over the last three weeks, seven-day average case counts have increased by 3,400 percent. This exponential growth in cases is likely attributable to the 81st Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which drew an estimated half a million visitors to Meade County and its environs from Aug. 6 through 15, potentially acting as a superspreader event.
[W]hile Southern states have been the main drivers of this surge thus far, the recent spike in cases in South Dakota warrants special concern.
The state more broadly has witnessed a 686.8 percent increase in daily case counts over the past three weeks, currently more than 10 times the nationwide rate. Meade County’s post-Sturgis uptick is certainly a contributor to this state-level increase, but neighboring counties have experienced a sharp incline in cases, too—ranging from a 1,900 percent increase in the past three weeks in Butte to a 1,050 percent increase in Lawrence.
Those two counties are also key focal points for the rally, which is not, in reality, confined to Sturgis. And because the rally is widely attended by residents all across South Dakota, it’s not surprising that counties further away—like Charles Mix County, which saw a 1,500 percent increase—are experiencing an incline in cases, too. Indeed, the event could have a regional impact: As the Washington Post reported Thursday, early numbers from local health officials have already connected at least 121 cases in five different states to this year’s rally. It’s possible that these cases might prompt outbreaks of their own and thus should be monitored carefully.
The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally represents the perfect storm for a superspreader event across this region: a large gathering with no testing, no masks, and no vaccination requirements. Though many (but not all) of the goings-on occurred outdoors and thus offered more protection against SARS-CoV-2 transmission than if they hadn’t been, the South Dakota Department of Transportation reported that 525,768 vehicles entered Sturgis over the 10 days of the rally. The sheer number of people in attendance paired with a lack of additional precautions presented prime conditions for viral transmission.
Dr. Shankar Kurra, vice president of medical affairs at Monument Health in Rapid City, told The Daily Beast he was living through a nightmare on repeat.
“We knew this was going to happen,” Dr. Kurra said. “It happened last year. It was just playing a reboot of last year pretty much.”